


Wuxing (Five Goings)

by poisontaster



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angelic Possession, Angels, Canon-Typical Violence, Demons, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Rape Aftermath, Remix, Sam Has Powers, Sibling Incest, Wild Hunt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-10-11
Updated: 2006-10-11
Packaged: 2018-04-22 22:18:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4852622
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/poisontaster/pseuds/poisontaster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Whereas Western thought developed the idea of elements as substances, and Indian thought as emanations, Chinese philosophy conceived of the five elements, or Wu Xing, as dynamic states of change. </i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wuxing (Five Goings)

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Elementum Res. Progressus](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1224040) by [Maygra](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maygra/pseuds/Maygra). 
  * Inspired by [Elementum Res. Progressus](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1224040) by [Maygra](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maygra/pseuds/Maygra). 



> This was written in 2006, before angels or the Wild Hunt were ever referenced on the show and what we knew about demons was very minimal; therefore the depiction won't match up to modern canon.

**FIRE GENERATES EARTH**

Begin at the beginning.

Except there are lots of beginnings. As the pieces of their past are consumed and burned to ash behind them, they have to start again, anew, find work-arounds for damaged tissues, invent things from whole cloth because the alternative is unthinkable.

This is a beginning: _A screaming baby is pushed into the arms of a boy almost too small to hold him. "Take your brother outside and don't look back. Now, Dean, go!"_

This is another: _"Dad's on a hunting trip…and he hasn't been home in a few days."_

Mostly he's stopped counting the times he's picked himself up and gone on from the broken eggshell of a past life. He manipulates his façade through hundreds of names and cities and holds secret the fragile pilot light at his core. He rises like a phoenix and never looks back longer than he has to in order to see what's chasing him.

Because something always is.

Being with Sam again doesn't feel like a beginning no matter how much he wants it to be, which is maybe how it catches him off-guard. Sometimes these things can only be seen in retrospect.

Like, for example, and just say…maybe ducking into both Sam's line of fire and the reach of a werewolf's claws to shove the muzzle of your shotgun under its chin and blow its brains out may not be the smartest thing you've ever done.

What? It worked, right?

And the thing had pissed him off.

But that's not good enough for Sam, oh no, growling all the way back to the motel like _he's_ the beast here and throwing around words like _stupid_ and _could've been killed_ and _kill you myself_.

And really, that’s all he thinks it is—Sammy blowing off some steam and adrenaline—until Sam's knotting his monkey paws into the front of Dean's shirt and slamming him hard up against the wall, screaming, "Goddamn it, Dean! Goddamn it!"

Ow. Why is it always the wall?

And then he realizes: oh. This is serious.

So he sort of pets Sam on the shoulder, clumsily, because Sam's still got him in that death grip and he's sort of up on tiptoes and he says, "It's cool, Sam." See how he was careful to say _Sam_? "Everything's c…."

But he can see from Sam's eyes that it's not cool, it's not cool at all, and Sam gives this kind of hysterical half-laugh, dragging Dean away from the wall only to shove him back into the plaster again until he thinks there's going to be a Dean-shaped print in the wall—ow—and then, and _then_ , he's kissing Dean—like… _kissing_ him—and Dean thinks: oh. This is _serious._

But that's pretty close to the time where thinking just about finishes up because Dean's kissing Sam _back_ and it's just like their arguing, all heat and demand and the utter inability to give or back the fuck down, translated to a new form

A new _art form_ , shit, because Sammy's a _lot_ better at this kissing thing than he is at arguing. And Sam was going to be a lawyer; he pretty much had that arguing thing down pat.

Dean doesn't even realize he's hard, though, until Sam's fingers fumble across his erection straining at the front of his pants, clumsy and groping and then it's almost all he can focus on: Sam and this; him and Sam.

Sam jokes with Dean about his lack of education but they both know _bored_ isn't the same as _stupid_. Dean always liked practical classes, sciences, math, shop, even his brief but memorable stint with Home Ec. Dean likes the Big Bang Theory. Not the same way he did when he was twelve, sniggering behind his hand…okay, maybe still a little like that. But there's something fundamental there that appeals to him, over and above his not so well hidden pyromaniacal tendencies. The idea that the world starts in fire, a clash that should be—could be—cataclysmic but instead is the start of everything. The idea of all these pieces, waiting, and then slagged by fire into something more than they were before.

Sam would say it's because Dean thinks he's the bright center of the universe anyway.

He can't rightly say if these pieces of himself and Sam were always waiting for this. He's not the one for that kind of navel gazing; if that's what you're looking for, you need to look to the guy underneath him, writhing and cursing in a thick, smoky voice Dean hardly recognizes. ( _Stupid, Sam says, dragging his head, his mouth down again and snarling against Dean's lips. Such a fucking asshole…yeah, yeah like that…oh. Oh, fuck…_ ) But if they were, those pieces, they had to have been like that universe-in-waiting, tiny as dust particles and easily overlooked, because Dean never saw them, even though they seem so obvious now.

See? Retrospect. Sam's not the only one that can use big words.

Dean listens to the ragged sob of Sam's breath as he licks and gnaws the searing skin of Sam's throat, leaving the imprint of himself on Sam's surface instead of allowing it to sink deep where he can't see it anymore. Sam's ragged, bitten nails leave gouges of their own in Dean's skin but it's not the first or last time that Sam's made him bleed and it's better than most of them.

Once, after Sam left but before Dad did, Dad sent Dean down to Mexico on a job. Having even less desire to end up in the Mexican jail system than the American one, he'd elected to camp out in the dry, dusty hills. The second morning, he'd woken unexpectedly early and had been sitting quiet, drinking down one of the bottles of water he'd brought with him when he saw… Well. He doesn't rightfully know what it was, never having seen anything like it before or since. Never really having even _heard_ of anything like it except in story books, but if he had to call it something, he'd call it a dragon. A real live dragon.

Not that it had looked like any of the pictures from those books. It was tabbied in the different colors of sand and earth, sort of like a gecko and bristled with curving spikes that looked oddly delicate at this distance but Dean bets they'd go through a man like a needle. It moved like a lizard too, quick, mincing steps on flexible black toes. Every few yards, it would stop, kind of shudder like it was about to sneeze and was momentarily engulfed in a blue haze of ball lightning. After the third or fourth time, Dean thought wonderingly, _it's bleeding off_ ; grounding off excess charge into the flat, pebbled and arid ground until it was just an amazingly large lizard.

And if Dean has to think about it—and he's got to think about _something_ because for someone who's never had a cock in his mouth, Sam is disturbingly good at this and Dean's going to blow his wad like a kid on his first fuck if he's not careful—he reckons that this might be like that dragon.

That there's this whole _secret_ to Sam that no one but him has ever seen and no one but him has ever got and a whole lifetime could go back and no one else ever would.

And that it would be real easy—especially in their line of work—for one of them to just…burn up or burn out or explode under the pressure without the other one to hold them down, to take that excess energy and bleed it away so that they're safe again, hidden again.

And his last thought isn't real clear, even at the time; if he had to mold it into something resembling words, being Dean, it would probably come out something like this:

_Yeah. Okay._

 

**EARTH GENERATES METAL**

Sam's felt restless in his skin all day.

Skin too tight, blood rushing too fast…jittery. Nervy. He feels as though, if something doesn't happen soon, he's going to explode from internal pressure.

Dean, as usual, seems oblivious, humming happily under his breath as they tramp through last year's leaves. If they weren't tracking, he'd probably whistle as well, or maybe sing.

It's almost time for this year's leaves to start dropping; Sam can see some of them are already starting to turn, gold, scarlet and orange, shocking blurts of color in the restless fields of dulling green and brown. Sam tells himself that his edginess is because of these woods, old and stately and alien in the way all trees old enough to truly _remember_ are. He tells himself it's because he's a city boy at heart, beloved of those places where books and soap and music can be had for the asking. But the truth is he and Jess spent hours and days hiking through California's redwood forests and he never felt like this, uneasy and nervous.

 _So maybe it's just that you're fucking your brother,_ his mind supplies unexpectedly and Sam bites down on semi-hysterical laughter, though not soon enough to keep Dean from giving him one of Those Looks.

"S'nothing," Sam says, his voice shaking with the effort of not laughing. "Brain fart."

Dean's eyebrows lift up another millimeter or so, but he just says, "Least those stink less than the ones you were laying down last night. No more onions for you, Sammy my boy."

And so Sam punches him one and then Dean tackles him. Sam goes down in a tangle of knees and elbows and then it's just like every other episode of the Sam and Dean Traveling Sideshow…at least until Dean moves wrong, or Sam does—and by that he means the _right_ way—and suddenly Sam's sporting wood like one of the mighty oaks around them.

They freeze. Dean's face, his eyes, look shocked and somehow very young, almost scared, as if Sam's caught him doing something wrong. They're not used to this, Sam realizes, either of them. They haven't overwritten the habits of years as siblings with the new history of lovers and the lines are blurry and weird.

Then Dean's face closes like a wound scabbing over and he writhes his hips against Sam's, deliberate. Once. Twice. 

Sam makes a whining sound deep in his throat, the thrum in his blood, the enthusiastic excitement of his dick bringing him up to meet Dean. Then: "Get off me, you whore." Sam shoves Dean's shoulders, shoving Dean off him and it's not quite as weird.

"Aw, c'mon, Sammy," Dean protests, even though he's already getting to his feet. He holds out his hand and snags Sam's wrist, hauling him upright like he's still twelve and gangling. Quick-fast Dean's other hand cups over Sam's cock, the heel grinding pleasure-painful against the shaft. "Sure you don't want some help with that little problem?"

"Yeah, how about some time when we're _not_ in the middle of the haunted woods?" Sam says, tugging vainly at the crotch of his jeans to find some configuration where they don't abrade or tease his sensitized flesh. "And it's not so little, jerkass. _As you well know._ "

"You have no spirit of adventure," Dean says loftily but he's already turning away. He's humming again, atonal and unrecognized, fingers tapping out a drum beat against his thigh as he raises his head like he's scenting the wind.

It's like a catalyst, though. Suddenly the sex is between them again and Sam is distracted by the pressure of his cock—which will _not_ deflate no matter how many unsexy thoughts he forces through his mind—and in some kind of perverse torture, even his ass feels delicate and engorged, almost wet, as if just begging him to take Dean up on his offer. 

Or _offers_ , because suddenly Dean also seems as equally interested in Sam's ass as he is in the hunt, taking every opportunity to proposition him—usually with the worst lame-ass come-on lines Sam's ever heard—or 'accidentally' brush against him or fondle him until finally—and most unnervingly of all—Dean holds Sam pressed immobile against one of the trees while he ruts against Sam's back, teeth grazing the nape of Sam's neck and his nose snuffling in the thick clump of Sam's hair.

"Dean," he says, shaky and a little scared and a lot turned on, as Dean's hand creeps around his hip to pull him back more firmly against Dean's cock. "Dean, wait, please… Something's wrong."

"Smell so good," Dean growls, thrusting against Sam again, grinding Sam into the bark until he worries about it being printed in his skin. "So good. Why won't you let me fuck you, Sammy? Thought we were doing that now, fucking."

"Not like this." Sam wriggles, trying to find the leverage to push back, but it's useless. Dean's got his legs spread too wide, is pressed too tight against him. "Dammit, Dean, can't you feel it? Something's wrong. Something's wrong with _us_."

Dean lets go of him so fast that Sam falls backwards on his butt, cushioned only by the spongy layer of leaves and pine mast. It aches deep in his ass and in his cock and he can only stare up at the look on Dean's face, shocked, a frisson of cold winding in and out of his spine and nerve endings. Five years ago, when he first saw that look, he hadn't known what it meant—what was hiding behind it. When he'd left Dad and Dean for school, he hadn't seen—understood—how his going would rip Dean to pieces, the way he hadn't seen a _lot_ of things about Dean…or himself, for that matter. Time—and sharing a bed—has changed a lot of that.

"Knew you'd say that," Dean says in the same growly-dull voice. Sam wants to leap up, pin Dean against the same tree and kiss and mouth and hump against him until the closed, stormy look on Dean's face gives way and they can go back to horny and happy and teasing, but he can't move, frozen on his palms and haunches, his heart beating too fast in his throat. "Just a matter of time. Just…didn't think it'd be this soon."

Dean turns his back. Sam divines Dean's intention a second too late, finally broken out of his paralysis to scramble to his feet, saying, "Wait, Dean—that's not what I meant…" as Dean takes off running.

By the time Sam gets all the way up, his brother is gone.

" _Fuck!_ " Sam shouts at the top of his lungs, not caring if the ghosts or whatever haunts these woods hears him.

It takes him three hours to backtrack to the Impala, casting around for any sign of Dean the whole way. Even more stupidly, his cock still rides at half-mast, throbbing and persistent, and he wonders if someone slipped them a roofie or Viagra or _something_. The whole front of his shorts feels clammy and disgusting.

The Impala's still there, gleaming darkly in the westering sunlight, but Dean is not. Sam curses a lot, both aloud and under his breath, and then picks the locks to open the hood. He pulls a handful of spark plugs and the starter coil—not that he _really_ thinks Dean would leave him, but better safe than sorry, and let's hope they don't need to leave in a hurry—and then goes around to the trunk to find a clean (or not too dirty) pair of boxers.

He strips quickly, paranoid about hikers—though they haven't seen any so far—and alternately worried about, horny for and irritated with Dean. He's stepping into the new boxers—dick more than half-hard now and bobbing distractingly against his belly—and scanning the woods watchfully when he spots Dean.

Dean's standing just inside the starting fringe of trees, half-obscured by screening second-growth foliage. Something's wrong with the picture but Sam can't quite place it as he takes a half step in Dean's direction. "Dean!"

Dean grins at him, frank and appreciative, and Sam remembers he's still dick out, only half in his shorts. Blushing across what feels like his whole body, Sam fumbles to drag his other leg into his underwear while hop-hobbling towards his brother. "Dean!"

Sam steps on a twig sharply with his socked foot and stumbles, hands and one knee smacking into the thick soil. By the time he wrenches up his head again, Dean's gone. "Dean! Dammit. _Dean!_ "

 _Horns._ That's what it was, what was wrong with the way Dean had looked; tiny, nubby little buttons of brown horn pushing out from his skin. Fucking _horns._

He takes off after Dean, afraid he'll lose him again. The sun's going down and the woods are huge; in the dark, he'll never find him. Whipcord thin branches and razor-edged leaves cut Sam's unprotected legs and he thinks about going back for his jeans and boots but the fear—inarticulate but dire—is stronger and so he keeps churning forward, steeled against everything except the singular thought of _losing Dean_.

Once he's through the scrubby border, the forest opens around him again, the light already faded and thick with shadow. Sam bites down on panic and makes himself concentrate on the ground beneath his feet. The detritus of leaves and soft pine scuffed off to his left gives him direction.

Several yards later, his socked foot tangles in something soft; Dean's shirt, the sleeves turned inside out. Not long after that, Dean's tee-shirt, reeking of Dean like he's been wearing it for days. The smell of it makes Sam groan and his cock thicken, every step after that an exercise in absurdity and agony that would make him cry if he wasn't so freaked out.

He's standing by a tree that's been liberally drenched in what he assumes is Dean's piss— _nice one, Dean-o, toilet trained much?_ —when he realizes he hears music. When he realizes it's the _same_ music Dean's been humming all day. And suddenly, it just _clicks_ , all the pieces coming together in his mind.

 _Oh, fuck me,_ Sam thinks. _How could we have been so_ stupid?

They've gathered in one of the clearings when Sam comes upon them. It's almost full dark and he can't see them all, even with the ur-light of their lamps and torches. It doesn't feel like many, though plenty enough to be dangerous to him—to them—and Sam wonders if there's many of them even left, driven further and deeper and _out_.

The King sits in shadow and is only a shape, an impression of enormous, broad shoulders and phosphorescent eyes and the horns, larger than Dean's, branching again and again until they seem almost like a tree themselves. The Queen sits in the pool of what light there is and it's she that draws his attention, because she's the one who has Dean at her feet, a leash of what looks like oak leaves and vines clasped around Dean's neck and held in her small, brown hand.

Sam can't help the growl that builds in his chest, the hot, tense feeling in his chest. "Mine," he snarls and the host rumbles and hisses its disapproval.

The Queen is tiny but not in the least fragile and Sam has no doubt she can hurt either one of them, kill them, if she so chooses. But she only blinks owlish white eyes at him and tilts her head. _::Mine::_ she replies. _::My Hunt. My Hunter.::_ She looks down at Dean and runs strangely long fingers over Dean's bare shoulder, making him shudder and sway in her direction. _::Good Hunter::_

She talks half in Sam's mind, pictures and feelings in a loose frame of words, barely contained. In her words Sam glimpses other Hunts, other Hunters, culled from other wanderers in these woods, hapless hikers and lonely wanderers. Of course none of them had been good as Dean, smooth and thick muscled, nearly naked now except for…are those _leaves_? Oh, man, he wishes he had his camera; Dean's never hearing the end of this one… Except that assumes either one of them is getting out of this one.

"Dean," he says, willing his brother to hear him, to recognize him. " _Dean._ "

Dean looks up and across at him and his eyes seem like they glow in the dimness, his freckles like spots of ink across his face and shoulders. Sam remembers his fingers digging into those shoulders, gasping, begging; remembers smoothing his thumbs across those high-planed cheeks and Dean ducking away, ashamed.

"Dean," he says again and _something_ crosses his brother's eyes. Dean moves a couple hopping steps towards him, enough that Sam can see Dean's cock, hard and dark, jutting up and curving into his belly. Dean sniffs toward Sam and his tongue creeps out to outline his mouth in wetness, dark rose against candy pink.

"Mine," Sam says again, more confident this time. "My Hunter. Mine."

The Queen comes down from her throne of twisted, age-silvered oak and takes small mincing steps towards him, Dean shambling in her wake. Sam fights not to flinch, fights harder not to snatch the leash from her hands.

She touches him and her fingers are cold, hard, like wood. Dean snuffles at Sam's fingers and Sam buries them in Dean's hair. Her eyes are different when she pulls back and he can see them again; no less cold or inhuman, but somehow sad, somehow understanding. _::Consort?::_ she asks and Sam understands it's an offer as much as a question. 

Sam looks at Dean, whose face tips up to him, the green in his eyes brightened to sunlight through a spring leaf. Sam's breath goes out of him and he ghosts his fingertips over the velvety knurls of Dean's horns, not yet budded. _Yes._

The Queen nods as if she heard his silent assent and steps away from him, jerking Dean with her. Dean goes reluctantly, straying back towards Sam as Sam suffers the host to surround him, strip him of his remaining clothes and daub his skin in cold mud and scalding hot blood, wind leaves into his hair. He doesn't look at them. He looks at Dean. 

_::Consort?::_ the Queen asks again, inquiringly. He sees in her mind the echo of past rites, past hunts. This can only end one way.

"Yes," Sam says again, this time aloud. His eyes still don't stray from Dean who looks back at him with narrowed eyes.

 _::Go, then::_ she says. _::Run. Run::_

And then he is running. The forest passes him in a blur of darkness and he is afraid though his blood runs hot and high. He understands that the longer he evades the hunt, the longer it takes to catch him, the better the rite. He understands too what will happen when Dean catches him. He is afraid.

He doesn't know how long he runs, chased by shadow and the belling echoes of Dean and the host. Long enough to feel like it's always only been this—being chased, being prey. Long enough for his heart to feel too big, slamming too hard against enclosing ribs. Long enough for his legs to ache and throb, echoed in his still unrepentantly hard cock.

It's almost a relief when Dean tackles him.

Sam hits, chest and flailing arm and then chin and the side of his face, sliding in the dry drifts of leaves and bracken. Dean shoves his face into the side of Sam's neck, sniffing, grunting, the thick length of his cock riding between the cheeks of Sam's ass.

"Mine," Dean growls, barely sounding human. His teeth scrape Sam's skin, followed by the wet heat of his tongue. "Sammy. My Sammy. Mine."

Sam could sob at the sound of his name from Dean's mouth. "Yes," he answers.

It hurts when Dean thrusts into him without prep or the gentling of lube. Sam presses his face against the ground and screams into the dirt, his fingers digging and scrabbling. Dean makes a noise, snarling and unidentifiable and pulls out, which hurts nearly as bad. Then Dean's prying him apart with rough hands and Sam struggles to pull away, right up to the point that Dean's tongue touches him, licking careful and gentle, delving inside and soothing away the pain. Dean keeps tonguing him, wet and slopping, until Sam is crying out for different reasons, his hips writhing in the soft soil.

It still hurts when Dean mounts him again, but not as bad, and after a moment, Dean shifts and angles for that place _that he apparently remembers quite well_ , making Sam spasm and moan. "Dean…"

"Sammy," Dean says back and it sounds clearer, closer to right. "Oh…oh, fuck, Sammy."

"It's okay," Sam pants, trying to get his knees under him, his hands. "It's oh…okay. Just…Let's just finish it."

Dean sort of snarls again then, bending to bury his teeth in the back of Sam's neck, thrusting hard and deep and fast. Sam breathes in the rich, wet aroma of the dirt and _them_ , the Lord of the Hunt and his Consort in the dying of the year.

Dean comes first, teeth gouging deeper in Sam's skin until the iron-copper tang of blood joins the other scents of their rut. He keeps thrusting, though and between that and the flooding of his come to better slick the way, it’s not long before Sam is clenching and spurting into the ground beneath him which seems to sigh and open.

Dean slips out of him and rolls Sam onto his back. In his hand is a knife, a flash of bright in oceans of darkness. _I'll get you out of this, Dean,_ he thinks. What he says, tipping his head back and baring his throat, is: "Do it."

Dean looks down at him for a long time, long enough for Sam to start shaking and his body want to curl in hurt and shock and fear. But he makes himself stay as still as he can, looking into his brother's eyes.

"Do it," he says again, lips numb.

Slowly, Dean shakes his head. "Not you, Sammy. Never you." 

Dean draws the knife across his own throat, a gesture that looks fake until the darkness falls from his neck, wet and flooding gouts that stink of copper. Sam screams, hurtling up to put his hands around Dean's neck in a vain attempt to stop the blood—Jesus, so much blood, slick and vile, soaking and bubbling up through his fingers.

At once, the Court is there, around them. The Queen puts her hand on his shoulder, and some things take his arms, forcing him away from Dean gently but surely. "Don't you touch him!" Sam sob-screams, twisting in the grip of those that hold him, thin, tall creatures with the heads of owls. "Don't you fucking touch him! He's mine, damn you!"

The Queen ignores him, undoing the ties of her tunic with one hand and reaching with the other to gather a handful of blood from Dean's body. Dean gurgles, spasming weakly against the ground. The pine mast is like a snow angel, swept in great wings. The Queen parts the panels of the tunic to expose her breasts, her small, round belly. She presses her bloody palm to her navel, leaving a print of gore. 

_::Accepted::_ she says and it rings like a bell to fill the whole world.

The host's lamps extinguish then, all at once, leaving Sam blind and he falls to the ground, suddenly released. Incoherent, he scrabbles sightlessly across the ground until he finds Dean, fumbling his way across his brother's body, still breathing, solid, _there_.

"Dean," he says, barely aware of his own voice. "Dean…God. Dean."

"Sam?" Dean asks suddenly, weak and grainy.

Sam lets out that breathless half-scream, half-sob again. His fingers search across Dean's neck, finding the thick, still-warm spill of Dean's blood but underneath the skin is whole, uncut. His pulse drums against Sam's fingers steady and regular. "Yeah?" Even that one syllable is almost too much, shaking wildly.

"Are we…are we cuddling? Are we _cuddling?_ " Dean sounds outraged. "Dude, what the fuck, get off me." He pushes Sam but Sam refuses to go, using his height and extra fifty pounds of weight to stay unmoved.

"No," he says, now strangely calm even though a part of him feels drunk and high with giddy relief. _Not dead,_ he thinks. _Not dead._ He decides he can worry about the rest of it—the host, the hunt, their clothes, the car, what it meant to choose Dean as his Consort and vice versa—later. Tomorrow, even.

"That…wasn't a dream, was it?" Dean asks cautiously after a long silence, while Sam taps out the beat of Dean's heart against Dean's chest with two fingertips. Despite his disdain of cuddling, his arm curves around Sam and he pets the naked skin of Sam's spine which is remembering how to feel cold.

"No," Sam agrees mildly.

"Are…are you okay?" Dean's hand slides lower, slips between Sam's cheeks to touch. 

Sam flinches and hisses, already sore, already swollen. But he says, "Yeah, I'm fine."

Dean curls up a little and Sam feels Dean's mouth brush the crown of his head in silent apology. Then, when he falls back again: "Let's get the fuck out of here. Nowish."

There are things that should probably be talked about—all the messy issues of brothers who also fuck, Dean's fears of abandonment, Sam's all round fears. They don't know what the fuck they're doing and Sam's never been comfortable with going on blind faith, especially when it's faith in himself. 

_Knew you'd say that. Just a matter of time. Just…didn't think it'd be this soon._

Sam sighs and sits up, wincing as it aches. Dean sits with him and curls a hand around Sam's arm, just above his elbow. Sam smiles, even though Dean can't really see it. "Yeah," he answers. "Let's."

 

**METAL GENERATES WATER**

Dean doesn't listen to Sam's protests, his fingers stripping, searching, looking, until Sam is naked in the dim firelight. Even then, he doesn't trust his eyes, running his fingers over every inch of Sam's skin looking for breaks in that smooth, fragile surface, looking for the wetness or gritty scritch of blood.

It's only when he finally can admit there's nothing to find that Sam's voice comes to him, soft and puzzled, saying over and over again: "…I'm fine. Dean, it's okay; I'm fine."

"Yeah," Dean answers gruffly. Then, because his relief is unhinging his knees and spine, he leans his head against Sam's shoulder and breathes in the bitter wash of Sam's sweat and the smoke of their fires and the faint tang of graveyard dirt, wet and faintly moldy. Sam's arm goes around him, solid and steadying, holding Dean there. And then, because he's Dean and because he can feel Sam's breath racing fast and Sam's cock filling up hot and thick between them, he shifts his head a little bit and licks a stripe up his brother's throat, tongue slurring over the almost invisible stubble. "Yeah."

"I'm okay," Sam says again, breathless this time, and then he's pulling Dean's head back by his hair—which Dean doesn't like nearly as much as when the positions are reversed—and his mouth is covering Dean's.

Sammy tastes like metal. He suspects they both do—the steel of blade and gun and even shovel, the silver of their bullets and ritual implements, the iron of their blood, so often shed in the defense of others ( _but not tonight, not tonight_ ). Neither of them is as impervious as steel or iron or even silver, though. 

The reasons that all of this is a bad idea—a _stupid_ idea—crawl up into Dean's mind again.

 _You've got to take steel into your heart,_ Dad said to him a long time ago, when Dean was still small enough to sit on his knee and Sam wasn't eating anything more solid than his own fist. His hand had covered up almost all of Dean's chest, then. _Make your heart hard, strong. And then you can do what needs to be done._

 _Like kill the thing that hurt Mom?_ he'd asked then and Dad smiled. He remembers it because he thinks it must have been the first time he saw his dad smile after Mom died.

_Yeah, kiddo. Exactly like that._

Sam's hands are on Dean's shirt now, unbuttoning, pushing, demanding. One of Dean's buttons tears away with a clatter in Sam's impatience. Then Sam's fingers are crawling up Dean's belly, zeroing in on his nipples; Sam likes how sensitive they are. Sam's aren't and he seems to compensate by playing with Dean's at every available opportunity. Or maybe he just likes the way it makes Dean shiver and moan, who the fuck knows? "Bed," Sam groans into Dean's ear as the callused pad of his thumb rasps over Dean's pebbled skin. "Fuck…Dean… _bed_. Or we fall down. Your choice."

Dean hesitates, his thumbs across Sam's carotid and jugular respectively, feeling that twin beat. The thing about Dad, about how he raised them, about how he thinks of them, about John Winchester himself is that he's a soldier, first and foremost. This is a war to him and in war, people die. Which is not to say that their Dad doesn't _care_. But at the same time, ever since Mom left them, Dean's had the sneaking suspicion that—though he'd be sorry and grieve and feel mad as hell and go and kick the righteous ass of whatever did it—if Dean or Sam died, it wouldn't be unexpected to him. It's not unthinkable, intolerable, impossible.

John Winchester is used to casualties.

And maybe he's doing his dad a disservice, he doesn't know. But ever since Dad left him, ever since a frantic call on the way to Kansas and a busted heart in some other shitsplat town he's doing his best to forget, Dean doesn't know how else to come to terms with it, that _absence_. He can't yet come to terms with this, either, bad enough when Sam was just his little bro, worse…well, just worse now. 

"Dean?" Sam questions. He looks confused, he looks horny and the combination sort of futzes out Dean's higher brain function. All these years and he never noticed how fucking sexy Sam looks, especially when Dean's been sucking on his bottom lip and it's all plumped up and dark. Then his gaze slides lower and he sees the bruises, coloring in fast. He'd had to cut the ghul's fingers off one by one, each of them reprinted in dead blood across his brother's throat. They were only lucky Sam's turtleneck had protected him from both strangling and the filth of their touch.

Unthinkable. Intolerable. Impossible.

Dean leans his head against Sam's shoulder again, hiding his face and hoping that hides it all.

"Dean?" Sam says again and now he sounds worried. "Are…" His arm snakes under the back of Dean's shirt, his palm flattens between Dean's shoulder blades. "Are you crying?"

"Fuck you, I'm crying," Except that it doesn't come out all snappy and sharp like he wants it too. His voice cracks halfway through and he can't quite bring it back under control.

 _Take steel into your heart,_ Dad said, that intent, earnest look in his eyes that he got when he was telling Dean something important, something huge.

"And if I am, it's only because you stink so bad."

"I do reek pretty bad," Sam agrees cautiously and Dean belts him one in the ribs. "Ow! What was that for?"

"For being a smartass and patronizing me," Dean growls, still not lifting his head.

"Dude. Did you just use a word of more than two syllables?"

"Oh, bitch." Dean grabs Sam by the wrist and the back of the neck and pivots them, sweeping Sam's leg and tumbling them both down onto the cheap cabin carpet. Sam grins at him and then wraps one of his freakishly long arms around Dean's neck and one leg around Dean's hip, shoving and wriggling until he's got Dean on his back. Well, there's no way Dean's going to put up with that kind of shit, so it's kind of a wrestling match all over the room. 

Dean hits his kidney against the bed frame. Sam almost tips the dinette over on them both. Sam's giggling like a drunk sorority girl, which Dean just finds…hilarious and then they're too hot and sweating and _still_ fucking rank as hell and they sprawl out on their backs panting and laughing

Dean stops laughing when Sam puts a hand high on his thigh, kneading gently. "Hey," Sam says and the giggles are gone, replaced by a deep huskiness that makes Dean shiver.

_Take steel into your heart._

Dean opens his mouth to say something; something like, "Hey, maybe we shouldn't do this anymore," when Sam rolls over and wraps his mouth around Dean's half-hard cock too fast for Dean to even get what's going on. Dean makes some noise he can't classify and doesn't care to and his hips lift up off the floor like he's been shot. 

Sam gags a little before curling his other hand around Dean's hip and pushing him back down. "Dean," he says, pulling off and breathing hard. "I know I'm a big guy and all, but you can't just ram it down my throat like that. This isn't a porno, man; I'll choke."

"Um," Dean says, because it's possible that he doesn't have full brain function back yet. "Yeah. Heh. Sorry."

Sam's fingers feather against Dean's hip, soothing and reassuring at the same time. He smiles and then drags his lips slowly over the head of Dean's cock. "I'm okay, Dean," he says yet again. "We're both okay."

Dean rolls his eyes and then rolls his hips, slower and gentler this time, Sam humming around him. "Jeez, Sam, I got it."

Sam plants both his hands on Dean's hips then, as if to hold him in place, his thumb caressing Dean's cock with light, feathery touches. "I get you're scared, Dean," Sam says, and when Dean groans and tries to twist away, Sam just _leans_ a little harder and Dean goes nowhere. " _I'm_ scared."

"Yeah, we'll you've always been kind of a punk, Sammy, hate to break it to you," Dean says, flinging one arm over his eyes so at least he doesn't have to watch this travesty of a blow-job. "Now can we get back to the dick-sucking part? That part was…fun."

Sam laughs and it vibrates through Dean's whole body.

Dean's tried really hard his whole life to be his father's son, a man his father could be proud of, a man he could be proud of, like his father. But he knows his father—their father—wouldn't be proud of this. And he knows, for as much as he wants to be the perfect soldier his dad wants him to be, he's not. He's not John Winchester and neither is Sam. 

And that just has to be okay.

Because the alternative is unthinkable, intolerable, impossible.

 

**WATER GENERATES WOOD**

It's dark here.

It's always dark here. Sam doesn't know how long he's been in this darkness; no way to tell without sun or watch to mark the passage of time. It feels like it's been forever, but it may have only been a day, a moment. It could be that there _is_ no time at all and ~~(if)~~ when Dean comes for him, he may emerge into his remembered sunlight and find a hundred years has gone by and all the things he knew are gone.

Because Dean is coming. Dean will come for him.

Dean always does.

An arm—a hand—both whiter than ivory, than alabaster, snakes around him to stroke cold down his naked chest. Long, vile black nails, almost sharp enough to cut and bleed him, toy with his skin. He shudders and retreats from the surface of his body since he can't evade her, trapped between her body and the balcony wall. 

"Why will you not eat, Samuel?" she asks in a voice like poisoned honey.

The first time she took him to her bed, he threw himself off this same balcony. Not out of horror, really, but more out of a sense of hopelessness, afraid that if Dean comes—and he will—Sam will only be betraying him to the same fate or near enough as to make no difference. 

"Because I'm not hungry," he lies and his stomach grumbles, showing it for the lie it is. But he will not eat her food. He will not drink her water or wine, though he feels like he could crumble into salt with thirst. Dean may laugh at him for being the research geek, but he knows his myths and legends—better now since the Wild Hunt tried to take Dean from him.

"And if I ask you why you do not drink, I suppose you will tell me you're not thirsty either?" One fingernail circles his navel, fascinating to her as she has none of her own. The things that live in her hair rustle and shift.

He didn't die of the fall, of course. He doesn't know if it's even _possible_ to die here. He suspects not; nothing he's tried has worked. He remembers the endless span of time where she let him sweat and whimper his pain, all of his bones broken, while she sat and giggled, bathing in it like Jess would once bask in the sun.

"That's right," he says blandly. He'd like to be different about it, more defiant, more like Dean. He was in the beginning, when this was new— _how long? How long ago was it? How long has it been?_ —angrier, disobedient, but now the memories of past agonies churn in the acid of his stomach and all he can manage is this passive noncompliance.

"Look at me, Samuel."

In this, she can compel him. He turns, fighting it the whole way. Doing what they do, with the injuries they've suffered over the years, Sam used to think he had some small understanding of pain but he doesn't understand pain like this, pain as an art form, drawn out and calculated, exquisite and studied.

To his eyes she is beautiful enough to take his breath away. An icy and aloof perfection, but perfection nonetheless, rendered in almost pure shades of black (eyes, hair, what wisps of clothing she bothers with) and white, except for the blood darkness of her lips and the half-colors of her jewels. In the darkness between blinks, however, or when he dares close his eyes, he sees her how he thinks she must really be--squat, enormous and terrible with too many teeth and limbs and flat, withered dugs that leak and stain her stretched belly.

When she rapes him, it's with his eyes wide open, because the illusion is better.

"He's not coming."

_He is. He will. Dean will come._

"You're alone here. Friendless."

_Not for long. Not forever._

"Except for me."

_Fuck you. Fuck you, you demon whore._

"And you are so very…unkind to me." She pouts, looking eerily like a negative of Jess, then tosses her hair back over her white shoulders. The creatures in her hair gibber and squeak and the strands shift and move long after she is still. "Am I not sweet?"

"My brother will come for me," Sam says steadily, though inside, steady is the furthest from how he feels.

She presses closer, driving him back so he is against the stone, balcony railing digging into his kidney and his shoulders leaning out over the drop. The air is very cold against his naked shoulder blades and he is conscious of the space between them, where a knife or arrow could easily go. "You mean your lover, do you not?" she asks, dragging dry lips up his skin from ribs to neck while he shudders in horror at her touch. Her tongue licks into the hollow of his neck. "Filthy boy. Is he so much better than I, then?" Her fingers work the pins that hold his loincloth onto his hips and the fabric whispers down around his feet. Sam's belly sucks in, trying to meet his spine and he wishes he could do the same with his cock as she fondles him slowly with cold, strong fingers. Eyes darker than his worst sins smile into his, delighted by his horror, his revulsion, by the way his body stirs and rises even though he wills it not to.

Shuddering, afraid, he can't help it when the word tears out of him: "Don't."

Her smile widens. She nips his jaw with teeth too sharp to be human. He doesn't bleed. He never bleeds, no matter what she does to him. "I could look like him, if you prefer."

Her face, her body, blurs and thickens and then, as if he's blinked—which he knows he hasn't, though his eyes are aching with the need to do so—a familiar face is smirking up into his, crooked nosed, freckled and impish.

"Don't," he says again and he knows he's playing her game, satiating her with his terror, but the thought of Dean, of Dean doing the things to him that she does, unnerves and unmans him to a point that he doesn't care. He doesn't care if he begs. "Please. Please, don't."

Her smile—and it _is_ hers, making a travesty of Dean's face—gets wider still and she bends to lick and kiss over his skin, sliding down until he/she/it is on her knees, one hand lightly encircling his cock and her eyes shining happily up at him.

Sam's fingers dig into the stone behind him until he feels some of the nails bend and shatter; his teeth bite down on both his tongue and his scream as she takes him into the strangely-cold wetness of her mouth. Her compulsion is still on him and he can't look away.

Suddenly, light blooms on his right, orange and sun-bright, unfurling like a tiger-lily and it's followed by the violent concussion of things blowing up and falling apart. The balcony—the whole _palace_ —shakes and he and the Demon Queen are flung sideways.

"Dean," he whispers.

The Queen hisses and when he looks at her, she is again in her female seeming, kneeling, in contrast to his sprawl. "No," she grits through clenched teeth and tight lips. A second explosion answers her and Sam hears something—many somethings—screaming.

Sam doesn't even think about it, he pushes to his feet and runs. 

The she-demon screams behind him, drowned quickly in the thunder of more explosions, a whole chain of them like a string of firecrackers. The hallway trembles around him and dust and other, viler things cascade over him. He shakes the worst of it away and keeps running, knowing he's fucked if the Queen catches him. She shrieks again and then he can hear her behind him, enormous and thudding, gaining speed like a juggernaut.

Sam races down the hallway fast as he's ever done anything in his life, his bare feet slipping on the slick stone. At the end of the hall is a doorway out to the open air and he comes out to the head of a stair, the stone pushing the breath out of his belly as he crashes into it. Stairs in either direction; he chooses right arbitrarily trying hard not to outrace his precarious balance as he leaps down three and four at a time. Something fast and flying snatches viciously at his hair; he bats it away, unseeing. "Dean?" he shouts. "Dean?" _Please God, let it be Dean._

The courtyard is full of monsters, all of them running, both with and without purpose. From above him, Sam hears the Queen shriek yet again and his heart hammers in his chest.

"Sam? _Sam?_ "

And that voice. God in Heaven and the whole choir of angels, that _voice_ , calling him, screaming his name, searching for him.

 _Thank God. Thank you._ "Here!" Sam yells, his voice breaking. "Dean! I'm here!"

Another detonation, this one close; over his head the stone rockets outward like cannonballs and flaming debris rains down on him, searing his naked skin. Sam ducks and weaves the best he can, half-blinded by smoke and his ears ringing. He keeps screaming, though, "Here! I'm here! Dean!"

Until Dean is suddenly grabbing him by the bicep and swinging him in a tight circle, into an even tighter embrace. Sam's arms go around his brother so tightly Dean grunts and they jerk in tandem with the recoil as Dean fires his shotgun past Sam to take out something behind him that Sam can't see with his face buried in Dean's hair.

That's about all they have time for, though, as Dean pulls back and looks carefully into Sam's eyes. "You all right?" Dean asks gruffly and presses a .38 into Sam's hand.

Sam nods and wipes his face with his elbow. "Just smoke," he says. There's a demon behind Dean on his left, Sam raises the .38 and is deeply satisfied when its head disappears in a spray of ichor and charcoal smoke.

"Did you eat anything? Drink anything?"

Sam shakes his head.

"That's my boy." Dean ruffles his hair briefly. "Gotta go," Dean says, shrugging out of his jacket and throwing it around Sam's shoulders. "Before our back up backs out on us." As Sam shrugs into the coat, and though Dean's not looking at him, Dean's hands linger, touching Sam's face, Sam's hair, fingering across his neck until he finds Sam's carotid and then letting his finger ride the pulse. He turns for a second and his fingers curve around Sam's neck, warm and real. "I'll get you out of here," he says and there's no doubt in his voice. "Okay?"

"Yeah," Sam says. He's shaking and his legs feel weak, but there's no way Dean can carry him out of here and that means he's got to stay on his feet. He can do this. He's getting out of here. Dean said so.

"C'mon, Sammy," Dean says. He turns and blows another demon to hell…or wherever they go when they die here, die for real. "You and me."

Sam buttons up Dean's coat—familiar and with the scent and heat of Dean's body—over his nakedness and nods.

Dean leads him through the crumbling palace and Sam worries about the Demon Queen in between bullets and absurd, tearful joy every time Dean bumps his shoulder or thigh with his own or guides him past some piece of rubble or flaming death, hand on Sam's shoulder, the small of his back, his arm.

At what's left of the palace gates, two other men meet them, both thin and sort of seedy looking. The blond has a British accent and the dark one looks vaguely Asian. Dean introduces them both as John and they both sneer at each other. "Don't ask," Dean mouths with a shake of his head. Sam leans against a pillar, shakier than ever and trembling, his feet cut up to hamburger by their flight and yet not bleeding. Dean is yelling at the two Johns, something about gates and runes.

Sam feels himself fading out, really close to just pitching head first and fainting. However long he's been here, the lack of food and water have left him weak and his whole body hurts, fuchsia with cold. Dean and the Johns seem very far away and Sam can't scrape his voice out of his chest to say anything, warn them. He wavers, cold and sweating, supporting palm sliding on the slick stone and then suddenly _Her_ hand is around his throat, choking off the last of his breath. It doesn't feel even remotely human and he's glad he can't see the rest of her. The chittering in her hair seems angry and sullen.

"You have not been a very good guest, Samuel." Her voice is the same, smooth and quietly dulcet, right against his ear as he flails weakly for air. "Is this how you repay my hospitality?"

"Yo. Bitch."

Sam struggles to turn his head sideways at the sound of Dean's voice. He can sort of see Dean, holding…not a gun but something small that twinkles silvery on a shining chain. Whatever it is, it makes the Queen's claw tighten around his neck and she _howls_ , a horrible, echoing ululation that rips into him and turns him deaf to all other sounds. 

And then she is dissolving, turning to gritty, foul smoke that rushes past him, towards Dean. The moment her grip on him is gone, Sam collapses, too weak to even put out a hand to catch himself.

Dean is with him again suddenly and he thinks maybe he blacked out for a moment. Dean pulls him up, rubbing his face carefully with the sleeve of his flannel and looking worriedly into Sam's eyes. "Just a little further, Sammy, I promise. You still with me?"

Sam nods, though he doesn't know if he can really make it even 'a little further'. "How…?" He doesn't have the strength or breath to finish the question, even if he knew how. 

Dean holds up his hand. The chain is wrapped around his fingers and dangling from it is what looks like a fancy perfume bottle of pink glass or really thin shell, banded in metals of different colors in some pattern. Inside, something rattles and behind it, he thinks he can hear the Queen's shrieks of rage and outrage like distant squeaking. "Spirit trap," Dean says briefly. "Only works against demons of this realm." He twists and looks over his shoulder. "John!"

The faux-Asian John looks up and Dean tosses the bottle to him. John fields it one handed and Blond John mutters something about American show-offs. Dean turns back to Sam, gentle as he gathers Sam up and close. "We're almost out of here," Dean murmurs, combing his fingers through Sam's tangled hair. "Almost out."

Sam nods tiredly. Though he can't wait to be rid of this demon-haunted wasteland and see the sun and breathe real air again, a part of him thinks he could be content to stay like this, his head bowed to Dean's shoulder and his lanky body compacted up so Dean's arms can fit around as much of him as possible.

_You came. I knew you would. I knew you'd come._

"Dean!" British John yells and Dean bunches and heaves, tugging Sam with him. The other John grabs Sam by his arm and Sam flinches and half-screams, suddenly flooded with choking panic. He tries to burrow into Dean's side, Dean's arm snaking around him to steady them both. John backs off fast and Dean says, unnecessarily, "I got him."

"Yeah," John says dryly, "He ain't heavy, he's your brother. Got it."

Sam recognizes—knows—he's being crazy but the thought of anyone but Dean touching him… He can't. He can't.

"Okay," Dean says. "It's okay, Sam. I'm right here. We're gonna do this old school, okay? I'm going to give you a piggy back ride."

"'Kay," Sam manages from his dry throat. 

"You're going to have to hold your breath when we go through," Dean tells him, still in that same calm, patient voice. Sam sort of wants to snap at him, tell Dean he's not a fucking baby, but it _is_ soothing at the same time and he doesn't want Dean to stop talking to him so he shuts up and lets himself be manhandled onto Dean's bent back. Dean grunts. "Jesus, Sammy, you're going on a fucking diet when we get back, for serious."

_Yes, Dean, okay. Whatever you want. Just get me out. Just…I want out._

"We're going to come out in water," Dean continues, oblivious, "so don't freak out, okay? I got you. I won't let anything happen to you."

"Okay," Sam says again and then they're following the Johns through the shattered gates that lead out into the wastelands beyond.

Except…

Except they never reach the other side of the gates. The minute Dean steps into/across the threshold, Sam feels _something_ all across his skin like a clammy membrane of plastic, vaguely unpleasant and he can't see or hear a damn thing. He tries to tighten his arms and legs around Dean's solid, warm body but there's no sense of movement. And then, as Dean promised, they're suddenly in water.

Sam fights the reflexive urge to inhale, fights harder not to strangle and crush Dean as his brother tows him to the surface. He tries to help, doesn't know how good at it he is. He can feel the sun's rays even through the water, piercing his paled skin like spears and that's when it hits him that this is really real. That he is out and he is free and he is with Dean again. They break the surface and Sam shouts aloud. Because he can.

When they reach the shore, the Johns reach to haul them up, dripping, out onto the thick grass of the bank, and Sam is so exhausted and so stupidly overjoyed, he can't feel afraid of their hands on his skin. When the demon Queen took him, it was winter, cold and bitter, the grass brittle and crackling underfoot. She'd dragged him under the ice and he can't remember the last time he was really, truly warm. Now it's verdant and sweet with the wild promise of flower and summer. Sam curls into a small ball overwhelmed with the need to cry, long choking sobs of exhaustion and relief and gratitude and fear. He presses his face into the warmed soil and shudders, only bare inches from doing just that. He wouldn't even care if Dean teased him.

After a moment, Dean comes and wraps himself around Sam, one arm pulling Sam tight against him and his face pressed into the sopping tangles at the nape of Sam's neck. Sam makes a noise, soft and inarticulate. "We're done here," Dean says to the Johns, sort of, almost, not-quite rocking Sam—slightly enough that either one of them can deny it, anyway. "Blow."

"We're even, Winchester," Dark John says, his voice pinched and oddly angry.

Dean hesitates and Sam thinks about how much Dean hates to give up leverage, even the slightest bit. Then his arm tightens around Sam again, almost painful and he says, "Yeah. We're even, Constantine. Both of you."

Sam listens to the swish of the Johns' feet through the grass, the mutter of some quiet-voiced argument that sounds old and familiar to them both. When they're gone, Dean says quietly, "I have clean clothes in the car."

Sam nods, that thick sense of _too much_ still pressing his vocal cords flat.

Dean is silent then and they lay there, the daylight beating down so strongly that he sees orange across his closed eyelids. It feels almost like food, seeping through his skin. After a while, Sam feels strong enough, steady enough to turn over slowly, so he's facing his brother. Their legs tangle and they work and shift and sidle to be as close as humanly possible, touch as much as they can.

Finally, with Sam's face buried in his neck and his hand curved around Sam's nape, Dean ventures, "You can cry if you want to, Sammy."

And if that's all he was waiting for, Sam feels his chest rip and tear under the force of his first sob. Not because he's sad. Because he's happy; so happy it feels like he's deranged with it. Because he's here and Dean's here, alive and free. He held on and his faith was rewarded.

"It's okay," Dean whispers, and it is. It really really is.

 

**WOOD GENERATES FIRE**

Sleeping with Sam isn't an easy proposition at the best of times. First of all? He's enormous. Have you seen the kid? Second of all, all that room that he's trying not to take up when he's awake? Yeah, no such problems when he's out of it. Sam _sprawls_. And going back to that whole enormous thing, when he sprawls, there's not a whole lot of room left for anyone else, especially another someone who's not so small himself.

The compromise is that Sam does a lot of his sprawling _over_ Dean, but that's a lot of nights of waking up with your kid brother slowly choking you to death with his arm across your windpipe, or damn near losing a kidney—or a ball—to his knifelike and bony knee. Let's not even get into his cold ass feet. And he won't sleep in socks, oh no. "I like you better," he'll say in that sleepy, dazed voice, eyes only half-lidded and that goofy smile on his lips. 

Then there's the noises. Bad enough when Dean's balls deep and Sam's moaning and hollering loud enough to get them arrested (though it is kinda hot, that he can get Sam all riled up like that). But he talks in his sleep, muttering nonsense that he seems to wait until his lips are pressed _right up against your ear_ to tell you. He makes little sounds, whimpering, like someone's hurting him—or fucking him, because those noises are actually a lot alike—and sometimes Sam wakes up and is _all over him_ … Getting off topic, here. 

The point is, sleeping with Sam takes some adjustment. Hell, sleeping with _anyone_ does, because it's been years since he's even done that and Sam was a lot smaller then. And then came the visions, which are inconvenient and worrisome, but rare enough that Dean did his grumbling, held Sam a little closer while Sam did his freaking out and then either got up and started packing or went back to sleep. The point is that it's _manageable_.

But ever since he took Sam back from that evil, shitsucking demon bitch that stole him, Sam's been a mess. Half the time Sam's afraid to close his eyes, staying up for days at a time, and when he finally _does_ pass out because he's too exhausted to do anything else, he thrashes and flails through bad dreams that have Dean waking him up after a couple hours anyway because anything has to be better than whatever's making him make those hurt noises that sound _nothing_ like sex noises and those agonized pleas of, "Don't. Please. Please, don’t."

He feels angry, which is an emotion he's always been able to work with, but he also feels helpless and he's never done helpless well. And now this.

Sam opens his eyes. "East. Still east," he says, the first words from his mouth. Then he blinks and his eyes seem to focus. "Did you sleep at all?"

"Some," Dean lies, because Sam doesn't need to know and doesn't need to feel shitty about how many hours Dean's watching over him while Sam catches what sleep he can. Sam snorts, though, and Dean knows Sam doesn't believe him. "You got any better idea what we're looking for?"

When in doubt, change the subject. It's a philosophy.

Sam shakes his head and looks down, lids and eyelashes hiding his eyes. "No. Just…just that same feeling of _pull_." Sam touches his navel lightly. "Right here."

"You know I don't like this, right?"

Sam nods, his eyes still averted. "I know. But…I really don't think it's bad."

It's Dean's turn to snort. "That would be a switch."

"It feels different, Dean. It feels…I don't know." Sam's hand moves from his belly to Dean's, stroking his thumb over Dean's navel a lot like he was just touching his own. The skin there ripples and Dean shivers because Sam's really weird about sex right now too and Dean's horny as all fuck. Dean doesn't know what the demon did to Sam, because Sam just out and out refuses to talk about it—and wasn't that a switch too?—but he can guess some of it, just from Sam's new fucked up reactions. He's trying to be a good brother—a good man—about it, but he also misses fucking something other than his good right hand. And that just makes him angrier and more frustrated. He doesn't know what John's going to do with that little bottle of demon but Dean hopes he makes that bitch suffer a long fucking time and twice on Sunday.

"Well, we're going, right?" Dean says and Sam nods a second time. 

"Yeah." Then Sam's fingers are straying lower, into the thickness of Dean's pubic hair and Dean's belly sucks in, his breath coming fast and shallow. Sam looks up, through those long, girly lashes. "Dean…can we…?"

Dean inhales sharply and sort of like a gasp when Sam grasps his cock. Sam's touch is light and sort of tentative, but even so, Dean can _feel_ every drop of blood in his body rushing there. "Uh…yeah, Sam. Yeah. We can do whatever you want."

Sam shifts so he can bring his other arm up, rub his thumb hard over Dean's bottom lip. Calluses catch on dry skin. "I want to fuck you," he says. He sounds like he expects Dean to argue about it but Dean just reaches behind and off the side of the bed to fish the tube of lube out of their bag and hands it to Sam. They've never done that before but that doesn't really matter.

"Yeah, Sam," Dean says again. "Whatever you want."

Sam's a little rough with him, a little clumsy and it hurts some at first. Dean fists his hands in the sheet, curls up his toes and wonders what the fuck all the fuss is about. But then Sam plants a hand on Dean's pelvis and pulls him _up_ and _back_ and tilts his hips and angles across that spot and Dean thinks: _oh._

And it's not great. But Dean can see how it could be great, sees how this is something he wouldn't mind doing again when Sam's a little more outside his own head. Sam's hips piston against him and Dean thinks he's going to have Sam's pelvic bones reprinted in bruises across his ass. Dean braces one arm against the headboard and strokes himself in counterpoint to the burn-thrust of Sam inside him, looping signal waves of pleasure-pressure that have him coming long before Sam's done. Sam guides him down to the mattress and Dean lies boneless and sated and open while Sam fucks himself in Dean to his own orgasm. After, he lays sprawled on Dean, still mostly inside, and falls asleep kissing apologies into Dean's sweating skin. It's not the most comfortable Dean's ever been in his life, for sure, but Sam seems to sleep without dreams and that's what counts.

Another week of this—Sam's dream-visions, nightmares and hard and heavy fucking with Dean on the bottom—finds them somewhere in Missouri, digging in a field that's no more distinguishable from any other field Dean's ever seen. 

"Are you sure this is it?" Dean asks after several hours of hard digging. He shoots the spade into the damp-thick dirt and wipes his forehead with the back of his arm, doubtless just spreading the dirt around some.

Sam nods. He's become more and more nonverbal the closer they've gotten and Dean's tried to take that in stride too, because he knows Sam is messed up and if he can't do a damn thing to fix it, maybe Sam will figure out how to fix himself. 

Dean sighs and picks up the spade again, breaking the dirt for Sam to shovel away. After a couple more minutes, he scrapes across something that sounds like wood. He and Sam both drop to their knees and start sweeping through the softened soil until they uncover wooden, half-rotted box just about as long as Sam is tall.

Inside, nestled in a swaddle of what looks like velvet is a sword, what Dean would call a herkin' big-ass sword and Sam would probably primly call a broadsword if he were talking. The hilt is damn near as long as Dean's forearm, smooth, sinuous silver unbroken by any sort of ornamentation. The blade is similarly plain, double-edged and unrusted, looking wicked as hell. Dean doesn't like it.

"This?" he asks. "This hunk of junk is what we came all this way for? I hate to break it to you, Sammy, but neither one of us is named Ghost Dog and we're not down for the Way of the samurai."

"This isn't a samurai sword," Sam says absently, chewing on the pad of his thumb.

Dean rolls his eyes. "Missing the point here, Sam. What are we supposed to _do_ with this?"

"I don't know." 

Sam reaches for it and all the bad feeling that's been grumbling in the back of Dean's mind suddenly comes surging up like he's going to puke. He says, "Sam, don't!" and tries to knock Sam's hand away, but he's not fast enough.

Sam's fingers close around the hilt and he starts to lift the sword out but it's too heavy to do one-handed so it just kind of tips up slightly. There's no bolt of lightning or anything and Dean starts to feel a little stupid about it when Sam says unsteadily, "Um…Dean?"

Light explodes from the sword in a soundless detonation, blinding Dean and flinging him back like a giant hand planted in his chest and _pushed_. For a minute, Dean can only lie stunned and breathless, blinking stupidly up into a cloudless blue sky. Then he thinks _Sam_ , and it's enough to get him moving again, rolling over on his side and then his hands and knees. He wonders how you kill a sword. He wonders how close the nearest forge is. "Sam?" 

He sounds wheezy and weak and he clears his throat to try again when a voice says, "No forge of man would do you any good, Dean Winchester. Else there would be no need to hide this blade away. No fires here are strong enough to unmake the metals of Heaven."

"Heaven?" Dean squints sunblind through the bleached out brightness, glad that his mouth hasn't ever really needed the blessing of his brain to keep working. "Think highly of yourself for a RenFaire prop." He thinks he can see Sam like a spot of shadow and he gathers his limbs for a tackle.

"Your fears are unfounded," the voice says again. "Your brother is unharmed."

"Who said I was afraid?" Deans says, even as the supernova of light dims suddenly, leaving the day dim and strangely dull in comparison. Dean blinks afterimages from his watering eyes and sees Sam.

Sam's pose is vaguely like that of a crucifixion, arms out to the side and his feet only barely on the ground, more than two inches of open space between his heels and the mixed grass and dirt of the field. His back is arched and his face is turned up to the sky. Muted light pours from his eyes and Dean thinks, absurdly, of Cyclops from the X-men. There's more light behind Sam, rippling and somehow thick, and it takes Dean a moment to realize its wings, gigantic and shifting in ways he doesn't entirely understand, sometimes translucently visible and other times just a heat shimmer.

"Sam!" He tries to push himself up to his feet but finds himself stuck in his kneeling pose. He can't feel any kind of force holding him in place; it's just like the ability to move is just not there, his brain untethered and unable to command his flesh. "Sam!"

"Your brother is well. Be calm," the voice says and Dean watches his brother's lips move and realizes the voice is coming from Sam, not the sword. "This is a great honor and bestowed to very few."

"Yeah, well neither one of us asked for this so-called honor, so why don't you let us go, we'll rebury you for the next set of suckers and we can all go our separate ways, huh?" Dean hates that his voice is shaking, but his vocal cords seem to be the only part of him that will move.

"You are wrong, Dean Winchester. Your brother did ask for this, else he would not have been called."

"What the fuck are you talking about?"

"The sword only calls those that can hear its song; if your brother followed its melody here, then it is because a part of him wants the absolution the sword can offer."

"A part of me wants to be a millionaire who hangs around the Playboy Mansion, but I'm still here, right?" Dean says, grunting as he struggles to break whatever it is that holds him like this. "You can't listen to Sam; kid doesn't know what the fuck he wants."

Sam's head tips down and Dean sees his face full on. Sam's eyes are completely obscured by the light that pours from the sockets, as if his body is only the shell for a small sun. "So much pain," the voice says through Sam's mouth and he wants to rip whatever it is out of Sam by the short and curlies, make it stop using Sam, stop talking through him like Sam's not even _in_ there anymore. "So much pain and sorrow for such a young thing."

"Sammy," he says, ignoring the thing inside Sam to speak directly to his brother. "Sammy. You can't…" His voice breaks; he gathers up the pieces and forges on, damned if he's going to let this Heavenly cocksucker have his brother without a fight. "You can't go, Sam. You can't just…give up like this."

"Why?" It—because he won't, _can't_ think of it as Sam—asks. It sounds genuinely curious. "Why should he stay as he is, fragile and friable and so terribly afraid? There is great power in him, great goodness he can bring into the world as the sword's avatar. He can make your world better. Is that not what you fight for?" Its wings shift and spread, flicking brightness into his eyes like tiny daggers, but Dean refuses to look away, afraid if he does, Sam will truly be gone forever.

"Not like that," Dean says, willing his voice to reach Sam, who is—must be—trapped in his own body. "We fight as humans. It's our flesh and blood. Not…not mystical bullshit. We don't take the easy way out. We don't…it wouldn't count if it was easy. We pay. Someone always has to pay. But not…not with our humanity. You don't just give that up. You don't just give that away." 

Dean doesn't even know if he's making any sense, doesn't really care if it keeps Sam here for even a few seconds longer. "Please Sam. Please don't go. Don't let…don't let it turn you into this. You can fight it. I know you can. You're a Winchester, right? We've faced down worse than this. Don't go. You don't have to go."

"Why?" And this time, Dean imagines he _can_ hear the tinge of Sam's voice half-buried in the voice of the Other. It blinks and for a moment, Dean thinks he can see familiar hazel-green. Just for a moment. "Why should he stay? What is there here for him, this world that has caused him so much pain? What has this world to offer him but more of the same? What here is worth refusing the gift he's being offered?"

"Me." Dean's chest feels too tight and his skin too small, feeling Sam slip away from him, seeing himself and the long empty years ahead of him without Sam in them. "I'm here. I need him. I…he's everything I have. I need him to stay. I need him to… I just need him. He's mine and I'm his and I need him." Dean takes a breath, strangled and hurtful. "Please, Sam. I wasn't kidding when I said I can't do this without you. That I don't want to. I went to Hell, Sam. I'll come to Heaven too, if I have to. I can't…" His body bends then, curling in on itself, fingers digging into the dirt until he thinks the bones might break. "Wherever you are, I'll come. I'll find you. So make it easy on your big brother. Just don't go. Stay here, okay? Just…stay. I'm begging you."

"Dean," Sam says and there's a hand on his shoulder, and then two. " _Dean._ "

 

**WUXING (FIVE GOINGS)**

Begin at the beginning.

This is a beginning.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 2006 spn_remix challenge. Beta work by mona1347, with my deepest gratitude.


End file.
